(NOTE: Minutes are longer than usual to include details of
faculty compensation report.)

Approval
of the Minutes from 1/23/2003
Faculty Senate Meeting

President Caporael brought the meeting to order and asked for
approval of the minutes and appendix of the January 23, 2002 faculty senate meeting. The Minutes were
approved with minor corrections.President
Caporael expressed appreciation on behalf of the Faculty Senate
for the 9/11 Open Response Committee lecture series and urged Senators to
bring the talks to the attention of their students and colleagues. The committee's
web page and schedule of events may be viewed at: http://www.rpi.edu/safecampus/bulletins.html.
For further information, contact Brian Lonsway,
lonsway@rpi.edu or Kim Fortun,
fortuk@rpi.edu

Change
in Agenda

President Caporael asked for a slight change in the order of
the agenda, as well as noting that Joseph Flaherty, Chair of the IT
Constellation Search would have to postpone his presentation until the Senate's
next meeting.

Report
on Rensselaer Constellations - Georges
Belfort

Georges Belfort, Chair of the
Biotechnology Constellation Search Committee, described the committee's
objectives, members, and activities to date. The process has been somewhat
slower and more complex than anticipated, in part because Rensselaer
is perceived foremost as an engineering school and not as prestigious in the
biotechnology discipline. Some junior candidates' interest is dependent upon
who will fill the senior candidate position, and so on. Both junior and senior
candidates have presented in the Distinguished Lecture Series, but the major
focus now is to attract more senior candidates. The committee desires input,
and invites participation at their meetings, which are open to all Rensselaerfaculty. Further information may be obtained by
viewing the Biotechnology Constellation web site at: www.rpi.edu/Contacts/Constellations/biotech

Report
from Standing Committees

Curriculum
Committee

Chair of the Curriculum Committee, Mary Ann Staniszewski, stated the committee discussed the importance
of having IT representation. It was felt that although IT has become part of
the School of Science,
the school would be overseeing only budgetary issues, not the IT curriculum.
After discussion determining the need for a possible constitutional amendment
to add representation from IT, it was suggested the Faculty Senate Executive
Committee appoint, on a temporary basis, an IT member-at-large.

Planning
and Resource Committee

Ralph Noble, Chair of the Planning and Resource Committee,
presented the committee's considerations regarding the graduation tuition
policy issue. The committee was to meet directly after this meeting and all
were invited to attend to discuss this issue.

Ad
Hoc Committee on Hartford

Susan Sanderson, Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Hartford,
stated they would attempt to meet for the first time this coming week, and with Hartford
every two weeks via videoconference. However, the cost of video conferencing
has been a dilemma. Provost Peterson interjected that the committee should put
together a budget of the estimated costs and submit it
to his office. Chair Sanderson was happy to oblige!

Faculty
Compensation – Curtis Powell

Curtis Powell introduced the compensation consultants from
Mercer. First, Dr. Andrew Klein, the Higher Education Practice Leader and the
top consultant from Mercer with 15 years experience, who is also an adjunct
faculty member in the School of Management
at AmericanUniversity.
Secondly, Kim Keating, Sr. Consultant, 7 years with Mercer, has an MBA from HarvardBusinessSchool
and is the project manager for the compensation initiative here at Rensselaer.
Also introduced was Anne Bilynsky, Rensselaer's
Compensation Manager.

Powell presented an executive summary of the recent benefit
changes. (attached) The
senate would like to review these changes, as well as dates of the Benefit
Fair, and other issues, and give further consideration to the necessity of
a Faculty Compensation Committee, which would review these type issues in
the future and make recommendations to the faculty on a timelier basis.

Powell suggested anyone who wasn't able to attend the town
meetings could visit the link on the Human Resource web site:
http://www.rpi.edu/dept/hr/townhall/index.html. He is still looking for
feedback on how to improve communications on this initiative to both faculty
and staff. Issues of retention and recruitment of new talent are of key
importance to their goals.

Andrew Klein noted that one of the agenda items of the
Rensselaer Plan is to raise the standing of the University, and to do that
means world-class faculty, and that means competitive compensation. "We
are comparing faculty salaries, by discipline, against the top 25 schools
[colleges and universities] in the nation." "If we want to be a world
class school, what does that mean? Does it mean being top 10? Does it mean
being top 10 in every school? Top 25? We don't have
that definition yet. But, it is clear that raising pay, without essentially the
"push" on the other side, [building the structure, level of
contribution] is going to be a funding problem."

"We're looking at three systems. One is really a
base-pay program. The second is a dual-track faculty compensation system,
differentiating contributors from world-class folks. And potentially the third,
we have just started discussing, is any kind of bonus or supplemental program
to recognize a particular contribution." In response to a couple
questions, it was apparent that Mercer was not charged to look into
supplemental pay issues, nor are they doing any kind of affirmative action
analysis, nor discrimination analysis. "We are not looking at individuals,
we are looking at positions (i.e., Associate Professors in the Management
School are benchmarked against a group of other Associate Professors in
Management Schools in the top 25 schools); that's the analysis and this is
blind to any of the Title VII areas of discrimination."

The "compression" issue was discussed. Presumably
a person who got above average raises every year since
they were hired, would have only a slightly higher pay than a new person who
just started. This is a merit matrix issue and organizations that use a merit
pay program have that compression issue. It is not avoidable within a merit
matrix design. It is avoidable by going beyond those designs, which may provide
some relief.

In response to a question regarding dual-track compensation,
Klein claimed that almost 100% of other schools practice it. Rensselaer
practices it now, though it's informal, and it's disorganized. World-class
talent is identified and it is paid more than the regular contributors in the
organization. One of the problems is, it has tended to look more externally, at
people you want to hire, and it has not looked (in as organized a fashion)
internally, about talent that you have here. One of the agenda items is to make
this kind of program available, and part of the organization, for current
faculty as well as faculty you would like to bring into the organization.
"We are looking to bring some order, discipline, logic, and parameters to
this, and we are here to ask for your help. We have anecdotal evidence [that
the dual-track program is going on here now] mostly that it is different in
every school, but we have comfort that if we ask people to say 'who are the
world-class contributors in this institution, and/or who are the world-class
contributors you wish you had here?' there isn't a whole lot of difficulty
creating the list."

Criteria that emerged from conversations with the Deans and
the President regarding what a dual-track program "ought" to be
doing, are: raise the prestige which ultimately translates into the increased
ranking of the institution, the reputation of the institution, the quality of
it's education, world-class faculty, and world-class graduates, to name a few.

Adjournment

At 4PM the meeting
was adjourned. However, Dr. Klein was willing to stay on and answer further questions.
Further discussion revolved around the dual-track salary structure, what other
schools may consider "world-class" faculty, the compression issue,
and faculty access to Mercer's final data, among other issues.